When it comes to recognizing efforts to preserve the historic character of Sioux Falls, Mayor Mike Huether is questioning whether the city should give its annual Historic Preservation Award to a project that received city money.

It’s been done in the past — several times — but this year, the mayor denied the Board of Historic Preservation’s nomination on grounds that the project received money through the city’s façade easement program.

“To me, if we can find a project that was done more specifically with private dollars, I think that would hold more weight,” he said.

The mayor’s award typically is presented each May, during Historic Preservation Month.

This year, the city’s Board of Historical Preservation unanimously nominated the Wintersteen Chevrolet Building at 11th Street and Main Avenue. The 1928 building that served as a Chevy dealership for 50 years was renovated into law offices in 2011.

Owner Grant Houwman hadn’t heard his building was nominated this past spring, but he was disappointed to learn the project didn’t receive the award.

“It doesn’t seem right to me,” he said.

He said he was fortunate to receive $100,000 from the façade easement program to offset some of the costs of making the building look original, but it probably covered less than 10 percent of the cost of restoring the building, he estimates.

Restoring the building took removing the fake stone exterior that had covered the brick, replacing windows, and finding matching bricks. Houwman said they tracked down where the original limestone had come from and had it specially milled and shipped to Sioux Falls to be set.

“It was a very slow and tedious project,” he said.

Several other projects that received façade easement money have been given historic preservation awards. Last year, the Security Bank Building was honored. It received the same amount of façade easement money as Houwman’s building. The Sioux Falls Coliseum, the Parker Block, Standard Oil and the Peck Block all were façade easement projects that received the award for historic preservation.

This year, the Historic Preservation Board didn’t receive outside nominations and instead made the Chevrolet building recommendation on its own.

Huether would like to see more than one project nominated.

“If that makes us work harder to strengthen the pool or find more nominations or make the competition that much stronger, I’d be all for that, too,” he said.

When Huether decided not to move forward with the award, the board established formal guidelines for the award.

Those were passed by the board last week and will go the mayor for his approval.

“It doesn’t really matter to us where that funding is coming from. We just want to recognize people who have preserved a building or preserved a district,” board chairman Adam Nyhaug said.